The time passed by. It grew perilously near to that 16th of February. But John took it all very placidly; probably that is the way, when one does these things on paper. He invented all day long, and took as much pride in the ingenuity and construction of those letters as ever he took over his work. "We went last night to the pit of a theatre," he said one morning to Miss Morrell. "Took Mrs. Rowse and Lizzie and Maud. The two girls persisted in eating oranges till Maud put a piece of a bad one in her mouth; then they both stopped. I was rather glad, Maud got hold of a bad one, because I was just racking my brains to know how I could stop them without giving offence." Miss Morrell looked quietly up into his face. "You shouldn’t take those sort of people to a theatre," said she. John took no notice of her grammar. "It was Jill’s idea," he replied. On the 16th of February, right enough, they were married. Miss Morrell came that morning to drink her saucer of milk in honour of the event. She walked in without knocking. It was her privilege. John was seated at his table, with his head buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking like a woman’s with sobs that had no tears in them. And there, before him, with their paper wrappings all scattered about the place, were a pair of Dresden china shepherds, playing gaily on their lutes. Hanging about the neck of one of them was a card, on which was written: "_To John on his wedding day--from his loving father_." CHAPTER XXXIV THE DISSOLUBLE BONDAGE If only it were that these things could continue--but alas! they cannot! We make our bubbles with all the colours of heaven in them, but cannot abide to see them only floating in the air. The greens and purples, the golds and scarlets, they seem so real upon the face of that diaphanous, crystal disc, that to touch them, to find their glorious stain upon the fingers, becomes the desire of every one of us. Out stretches the hand, the fingers tighten! The bubble is gone! That was much the way with John’s beautiful bubble of Nonsense. So long as Jill knew nothing of it; so long as he played with the fairy thing by himself, it was enough; but the every-day business of life, in which death is one of the unavoidable duties, intervened. One cannot play at these wonderful games for long. You cannot be married on paper--more perhaps is the pity. There would be fewer separations, fewer misunderstandings if you could. Life unfortunately does not permit of it. The law of Gravity is universal. You come down to earth.